Lenny Bruce (remember Lenny Bruce?)
said if you're from New York
you're Jewish, but if you're from Omaha
(or was it Iowa?) you're goyish,

even if you are Jewish.
How my grandparents got to Dayton,
Ohio without passing through Ellis Island
is less interesting than how they deprived

us of Lower East Side schmatta roots
and further exoduses to Central Park
West (which twelve room apartment
in my fantasy gets handed down

to me at $350.00 a month), then Scarsdale.
Instead we got the move from Dayton
View to Valerie Estates, named for
the elementary school -- ever hear

of that? Nothing Dalton or P.S. about it.
We took off for the Jewish holidays,
but the city stayed open. I bought a bicycle
with my Bar Mitzvah money; in New York

I'd have earned a down payment on
a condo (except I wouldn't need one).
Kroger's sold kosher food, but for God's sake,
they didn't advertise it to the world.